Seventeen months into Prime Minister Mark Carney’s mandate, as the Liberals continue to enjoy strong public support across the country, a series of senior staffing changes are underway in the Prime Minister’s Office and in the offices of several senior cabinet ministers. At the same time, MPs, ministerial staffers, and political insiders are increasingly speculating that a cabinet shuffle could...
U.S. President Donald Trump said Monday that the United States is “reinstating” a blockade on Iran in the Strait of Hormuz and will charge ships for safe passage, after another heavy exchange of fire threatened negotiations aimed at ending the war. He said on social media that Iranian ships will no longer be able to travel through the strait and...
One of Prime Minister Mark Carney's key staffers says he'll be stepping away from his role as he considers running for a seat in Parliament. Braeden Caley, Carney's deputy chief of staff, thanked the prime minister in a letter posted to social media for what he called "the honour of a lifetime." A forthcoming byelection in British Columbia will see...
Dennis Lu, retired from Natural Resources Canada, charged with breach of trust, unauthorized use of a computer. A former federal scientist in an alleged foreign interference case is accused of copying more than 2,000 documents off a shared departmental server to share with China as his lifelong career was nearing its end, CBC News has learned. Dennis Lu faces trial...
When Prime Minister Mark Carney visited this year's Calgary Stampede, he didn't ditch his blazer, but he was wearing blue jeans and the requisite cowboy hat as he worked the crowds among revellers preparing to watch chuckwagon races on Saturday evening. "There he is!" Carney said, as he spotted billionaire businessman Ron Mannix almost immediately upon exiting a motorcade with...
The latest Weekly Federal Tracker from Liaison Strategies shows the Liberal Party, led by Prime Minister Mark Carney, holding a 6-point lead over Pierre Poilievre's Conservatives. Among decided and leaning voters, the Liberals stand at 41%, followed by the Conservatives at 35%, the NDP at 14%, the Bloc Québécois at 6%, the Green Party at 2%, and the People's Party...
“Nice bridge you got there,” the thugs said. “It’d be a shame if something happened to it.” That’s not a verbatim transcript of what U.S. President Donald Trump’s operatives told Prime Minister Mark Carney about the Gordie Howe International Bridge, but it might as well have been. The U.S. President just shook down this country, refusing to allow the opening...
The Gordie Howe International Bridge should have been the easiest file in Canada-U.S. relations. Canada paid roughly $6.4 billion to build the bridge. Michigan received a new international crossing, customs facilities and a direct Interstate 75 connection without paying the construction bill. American workers, contractors and steel producers benefited. Automakers gained a badly needed alternative to the aging Ambassador Bridge...
The charity has met with several government figures during Michael Sabia’s tenure as Canada top civil servant, but says he was not involved
IFM Investors and Saudi Arabia's sovereign wealth vehicle are confirmed for the event in Toronto on Sept. 14 and 15
We lead two countries that do not have the luxury of relying on old orders of geography. Finland shares a border with a Russia that is waging a war of aggression against Ukraine and actively interfering in other societies instead of reforming its own. Canada shares the world’s longest land border with a United States that is reassessing its priorities...
“Rather than sitting here and arguing with each other, we’re actually going to get out there and talk to the people!” That’s how Premier Doug Ford defined the Legislature of Ontario. It was his defence for the unprecedented five-month break and the lowest number of days “The Ledge” will sit in decades.
Prime Minister Mark Carney’s charm—and that, he has in abundance—may be wearing thin with some Canadians. His recent enthusiastic endorsement of another oil pipeline, intended eventually to carry another 100 million barrels a day of Alberta oil to foreign buyers, will surprise only those who have not been paying close attention. Carney has shredded most of Justin Trudeau’s green policies...
Prime Minister Mark Carney has a plan to “modernize” the Senate. If this sounds familiar, it’s likely because his predecessor, Justin Trudeau, said the same thing 11 years ago. Trudeau’s reform measures sought to eliminate partisanship from Senate appointments—or at least to create this appearance—Carney is bringing back partisan appointments. While proponents of democracy and political equality are likely not...
Sandwiched between 25 other news releases last week — from the prime minister’s NATO trip, to his lunch with Saudi Arabia Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman — the man the CIA believes ordered the assassination of journalist Jamal Khashoggi — Mark Carney moved to drown out the opposition voices he’s encountered in the Senate. In a statement Tuesday, Carney announced...
“O Canada” was played in Saudi Arabia this week for the first time in 26 years. That quarter-century silence tells the real story behind Mark Carney’s visit to Jeddah. The last Canadian prime minister to visit Saudi Arabia was Jean Chrétien, in 2000, during a 12-day Middle East tour driven by a very different ambition: to reinforce Canada’s role as...
Prime Minister Mark Carney’s way of communicating and branding things is so distinct that some choice Carneyisms have crept into everyday Canadian speech over the year and a half he’s been a daily national presence. We don’t have plans or policies in this country right now – everything is a strategy. Public money purportedly luring private investment is, of course...
Serious times call for serious politics. That means serious leaders offering serious solutions. If all this sounds like a campaign slogan for the establishment, you’re probably right. But its rising resonance may well prove the unravelling of the conservative populist rage that has been driving politics in Canada, the United States and Europe.
Mark Carney is committing enormous sums of public money with little explanation, in ways that neither Justin Trudeau nor most other prime ministers before him could have gotten away with. It can be easy to look past, because of the financial gravitas that Carney carries.
Federal Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre provoked a backlash this week with an ill-advised comment on the outcome of the race for the leadership of the B.C. party of the same name. At a party event in Calgary, Poilievre took note of the presence of the new leader of the B.C. Conservatives, Kerry-Lynne Findlay, hailing her as the “future premier of...
Annual gatherings of the great democracies in the age of Donald Trump have acquired a certain … rhythm. There is the meeting that takes place before the President arrives, when all is as it usually is between world leaders of the same broad ideological hue: convivial open sessions, chummy photo-ops, urgent side-conferences. Then there is what happens after he gets...
When Elon Musk bought Twitter in 2022, he promised to restore its commitment to free speech, eliminate its progressive bias and otherwise preserve its role as the “de-facto public square.” Instead, as anyone who has had the misfortune of spending time there knows, he turned it into a right-wing echo chamber — one increasingly populated with spam, crypto scammers and...
Real life does not follow the binary framework of the movies, where a Bond-like hero vanquishes a grandiose, arrogant, greedy villain
It’s not often that a prime minister is lauded for something that he doesn’t do, but Prime Minister Mark Carney is currently being celebrated by six policy organizations for his inaction on an important Canadian regulatory matter. In an open letter published late last month, the CEO of the Canadian Health Policy Institute, the deputy director of domestic policy for...
I am sick to death of being told that wanting Conservatives to win elections somehow makes me a Liberal. It's one of the stupidest ideas ever to infect the Canadian political right (and there have been some doozies in recent years), and it has become an excuse for failure. Apparently, if you care whether Conservatives can actually form government, you're...
The grandaddy of all Stampede political announcements came on July 12, 2004, when PC Premier Ralph Klein held up a sign that said: Paid In Full. Klein declared the provincial debt dead and buried after many years of harsh cost-cutting. The words and the photo sped around the country and beyond. Nobody paid off all debt in those days. Within...
There are plenty of ways to celebrate America’s ongoing semiquincentennial: see a fight on the White House lawn, watch the World Cup in the shadow of the Capitol, visit a Great American State Fair on the National Mall. However they celebrate, Americans will likely see banners advertising Freedom250, a private vehicle for outright corruption cooked up by President Donald Trump...
He's not giving up. He's not backing down. If he was a boxer you'd need to knock him out. The man insists he is not throwing in the towel. He will continue to throw down the gauntlet. Wasn't so long ago Pierre Poilievre had the momentum, drew the huge crowds at rallies across Canada, attracted the young and the working...
I’m starting to believe that Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre is the subject of an elaborate, prolonged hazing ritual. The frat house in this scenario might have better decorum and nicer furniture than those found on college campuses, but the initiation process is the same: subject the pledge to a succession of humiliating rituals to see if and how long he...
The Conservative MP’s culture war posts about Prime Minister Mark Carney's attendance at Toronto Pride are bait for persecution points
Is this the end of Trudeau's independent upper chamber? Though it is perhaps not foremost on their minds when they gain power, every prime minister has the opportunity to put their stamp on the Senate. And if there was particular speculation about what Mark Carney might do in regards to Parliament's upper house, it is because Justin Trudeau's stamp on...
The Prime Minister's grand bargain is just intentions for now. But it's harder for Alberta’s separatists to say he's trying to hobble their industry.
Just how nonsensical does a pitch for a new oil pipeline have to be, in the current political climate, to be rejected out of hand? Courtesy of Doug Ford and Danielle Smith, we’re about to find out.
When it comes to theatre of the absurd in public life, nothing tops pipeline politics. There was Alberta Premier Danielle Smith—who has accused the Liberals of hamstringing Big Oil, crushing her province’s aspirations, and inciting Albertans to break up the country—turning to the feds to build her long-sought new pipeline.
Suddenly, pipelines are all the rage. Time was when you couldn’t get a pipeline built in this country, for love or money. Three pipeline proposals – Northern Gateway, Energy East and Keystone XL – came and went, dead of political hostility, regulatory obstacles or both. Governments, some of them anyway, seemed positively eager to discourage them. Federal legislation, Bill C-69...
Mark Carney had better hope that Tom Pitfield and Richard Martel are good senators. If they are not, it will be his fault. Carney announced the two appointments to the Senate on Tuesday, setting aside the non-partisan process established by Justin Trudeau who reformed the Senate appointment process for good reason. Every prime minister before him used the Senate as...
Prime Minister Mark Carney wants Canada to be a leader in the artificial intelligence revolution. NDP Leader Avi Lewis is betting Canadians want to pump the brakes. From the Hamilton Harbour to rural Saskatchewan, some communities are pushing back against proposals for massive data centres meant to power the AI boom with billions of dollars in investment despite fears about...
Over 300 Canadians have served in both chambers, only a handful were appointed by a PM from a different party. Prime Minister Mark Carney shook up the party standings in the House of Commons again this week, this time by appointing Conservative MP Richard Martel to the Senate. Carney built his majority government with the help of four former Conservatives...
A staff shuffle is under way in the highest ranks of the Prime Minister’s Office after Mark Carney appointed his chief strategist to the Senate and a key staffer decided to step down. Braeden Caley, one of Mr. Carney’s deputy chiefs of staff, told his colleagues on Sunday that he has left the PMO to consider running for the Liberal...
Prime Minister Mark Carney is defending the deal brokered between Canada and the United States to open the delayed Gordie Howe International Bridge and insists the revenue split with the Americans will be minimal. “We are sharing after Canada is paid back,” Carney said in an interview with CTV Calgary’s Tara Nelson at the Calgary Stampede on Sunday when asked...
Pro-independence group zeroes in on urbanites as Carney meets voters at Stampede. It may have been the final day of the 10-day Calgary Stampede exhibition and rodeo, but two pancake breakfasts held simultaneously Sunday morning made clear the battle for the hearts and minds of Albertans is just ramping up. At Ranchman’s Cookhouse and Dancehall, one of Calgary’s most well-known...
Prime Minister Mark Carney is offering his condolences to the family of U.S. Sen. Lindsey Graham, saying he "stood resolutely in defence of democracy and freedom." Graham died this weekend after a "brief and sudden illness," according to his office. A statement posted on social media says Graham's family "appreciates prayers at this time and asks for privacy."
Prime Minister Mark Carney perfected the art of flapjack flipping at a pancake breakfast Sunday as Alberta separatists vying to shed his leadership held a similar event. Carney attended one of the final Stampede breakfasts of the year at the Sunnyside Hillhurst Community Association. He has waited a year for a do-over after facing some challenges with his pancake flipping...
Bonnie Crombie is hoping to become the mayor of Mississauga once again. Crombie confirmed to CTV News on Sunday that she will register to run on Tuesday. She was mayor of the city for a decade, from 2014 to 2024, succeeding longtime mayor Hazel McCallion. Crombie resigned as mayor in 2024 after winning the Ontario Liberal Party leadership race the previous year.
The Calgary Stampede is more than a rodeo. It's a runway for western fashion that politicians strut down each year. Politicians of all stripes attend the annual exhibition and rodeo, considered a celebration of everything western. The cowboy hats, belt buckles, denim and boots that leaders pull on show that politics and wardrobe go hand in hand, say fashion experts...
Prime Minister Mark Carney made his first appointments to the Senate on Tuesday, naming four new senators to the upper chamber. They include Carney's principal secretary Tom Pitfield and Conservative MP Richard Martel, who will both fill seats from Quebec. He also announced he is dropping the non-partisan criteria for appointments to the upper chamber, and plans to rejig the...
Exporting oil, importing EVs among recent energy-related announcements. Soon after Donald Trump took office for a second time, with punishing tariffs and menacing talk of Canada as "the 51st state," this country's leaders began to invoke the idea of "energy sovereignty." It was a response to the fact that the biggest consumer of Canadian oil — the U.S. — was...
In a week that saw Toyota announce it’s moving some production from Mexico to the U.S., and a new KPMG survey finding four in 10 Canadian manufacturers have moved operations to the U.S. or are planning to do so, an international trade lawyer expects bigger manufacturing moves like Toyota’s on the horizon for Canada. On Monday, Toyota said it will...
Sen. Lindsey Graham, one of President Donald Trump's closest allies in Congress who traveled the globe to advocate for a more aggressive U.S. foreign policy, has died after a "brief and sudden illness," his office said. He was 71. The statement posted on social media early Sunday said his family "appreciates prayers at this time and asks for privacy during...
Prime Minister Mark Carney, on the heels of a trip to the Middle East, landed Saturday night at the Calgary Stampede where he ate mini doughnuts, watched chuckwagon races — and talked pipelines. "It's good to be back," said Carney, wearing a white hat and a belt buckle, as he walked the Stampede grounds and was welcomed by some in...
Iran said it considers the Strait of Hormuz closed once again after a vessel using an "unauthorized route" was struck by a warning shot in the critical waterway, further jeopardizing the already tenuous ceasefire agreement with the United States. The U.S. military said it responded to the attack with fresh strikes on Iran. "The United States is imposing a heavy...
A “complex” investigation is underway into a shooting at a popular Latin street festival in Toronto that left two men dead and at least four others seriously injured on Saturday night. Thousands of people, including families, children and seniors, were enjoying the first night of this year’s Salsa on St. Clair when gunshots rang out shortly after 8 p.m.
Prime Minister Mark Carney doubled down on his call for national co-operation to tackle a "threefold energy crisis" before his planned appearance Saturday at the Calgary Stampede. On Saturday afternoon, Carney reposted his sweeping 17-minute video argument for working across provincial boundaries and ditching his predecessor's climate plan. He first unveiled the video on social media on June 30, the...
Mark Carney is spending political and state capital left, right and centre. Moving aggressively to reduce reliance on the unpredictable United States of America, to bolster national unity and, Carney says, to put Canada on a more prosperous path, the prime minister is on a tear.
Ottawa has plans to create a sweeping new digital regulator, which would enforce both online safety and privacy rules and take over oversight for tech companies from the privacy commissioner. Some critics say the government is creating a "super-regulator" -- while others say there is a need for a strong regulatory body to tackle the many harms proliferating online. Here...
Ottawa won't say whether it will intervene in support of a Winnipeg-born global judge who is asking a U.S. court to reverse sanctions ordered by U.S. President Donald Trump, which have left her unable to use a credit card or most major online vendors. Washington sanctioned International Criminal Court judge Kimberly Prost nearly a year ago, over her work on...
On the heels of his latest trip abroad, Prime Minister Mark Carney is heading to Alberta for the Calgary Stampede. The prime minister is set to meet with representatives of the Treaty 6, Treaty 7 and Treaty 8 First Nations in Calgary this afternoon. He will then visit the Calgary Stampede grounds. Carney said on social media last week that...
After weeks of delays and public criticism from U.S. President Donald Trump, the Gordie Howe International Bridge is set to open at the end of the month, but Canada is set to forego more revenue than initially agreed upon. Housing, Communities and Infrastructure Canada confirmed the long-awaited opening in a statement late Friday. “Canada and Michigan have agreed to open...
More than 2,000 individual donors from across Canada have so far contributed to a crowdfunding campaign to restore 24 Sussex Drive, the now derelict official residence of the prime minister in Ottawa. In June, Prime Minister Mark Carney announced the launch of a national campaign to raise millions of dollars toward restoring the heritage property.
The number of people applying for a job in the federal government plummeted last year as Ottawa slashed the size of the public service. Two years ago, there were more than a million applications for jobs in the federal public service. But between April 1, 2025 and March 31, 2026, that number fell by nearly 30 per cent, to less than 735,000.
Grassroots Liberals in Beaches—East York will get their say on the party’s candidate in an upcoming byelection with a nomination contest in the Toronto riding that will run for just nine days. The party confirmed Thursday that it will hold an open race for the nomination, concluding with a vote on July 18.
The stage is now set for Premier Doug Ford to call key summer byelections in Scarborough Southwest and York—Simcoe. Ford’s Progressive Conservatives finally selected a candidate in Scarborough Southwest with family physician Dr. Noor Tarun winning a contested nomination Thursday night.
The Gordie Howe International Bridge connecting Ontario to Michigan will open July 27, the federal government has confirmed. A planned ribbon-cutting ceremony last month was delayed as the Trump administration looked to renegotiate a long-standing agreement between Canada and the U.S. "After years of planning, partnership and construction, the Gordie Howe International Bridge will soon be opening -- providing a...
A completed bridge linking Detroit and Canada is expected to open by the end of the month after U.S. and Canadian officials reached an agreement to resolve the dispute that delayed its debut, according to two people directly involved in the negotiations. The sources were not authorized to publicly disclose the deal before a formal announcement. A ribbon-cutting ceremony scheduled...
A better start to the youth summer jobs market helped the economy record steady employment gains in June, Statistics Canada said Friday. Employers added 18,000 jobs last month, the agency said, mostly in part-time and private sector work. That pushed the unemployment rate down a tenth of a point to 6.5 per cent, back to where it stood in January...
CHARLESTON, S.C. (AP) -- President Donald Trump says he's recommended that Lindsey Graham's sister be named as his temporary replacement in the U.S. Senate.
CHARLESTON, S.C. (AP) -- The death of Sen. Lindsey Graham, who was running for a fifth term when he passed away over the weekend, began a tumultuous new chapter in South Carolina politics during a year that has already been full of upheaval.
WASHINGTON (AP) -- Senate Republicans will return to Washington on Monday with an uncertain agenda after the sudden death of prominent Republican Lindsey Graham, a committee chairman and key player who served as a crucial ally with President Donald Trump.
WASHINGTON (AP) -- Sen. Lindsey Graham, one of President Donald Trump's closest allies in Congress who traveled the globe to advocate for a more aggressive U.S. foreign policy, died after a tear in his aorta, according to a preliminary medical examiner finding shared by his office.
U.S. President Donald Trump said Monday that the United States is “reinstating” a blockade on Iran in the Strait of Hormuz and will charge ships for safe passage, after another heavy exchange of fire threatened negotiations aimed at ending the war. He said on social media that Iranian ships will no longer be able to travel through the strait and...
Sen. Lindsey Graham, one of President Donald Trump's closest allies in Congress who traveled the globe to advocate for a more aggressive U.S. foreign policy, has died after a "brief and sudden illness," his office said. He was 71. The statement posted on social media early Sunday said his family "appreciates prayers at this time and asks for privacy during...
Iran said it considers the Strait of Hormuz closed once again after a vessel using an "unauthorized route" was struck by a warning shot in the critical waterway, further jeopardizing the already tenuous ceasefire agreement with the United States. The U.S. military said it responded to the attack with fresh strikes on Iran. "The United States is imposing a heavy...
Ottawa won't say whether it will intervene in support of a Winnipeg-born global judge who is asking a U.S. court to reverse sanctions ordered by U.S. President Donald Trump, which have left her unable to use a credit card or most major online vendors. Washington sanctioned International Criminal Court judge Kimberly Prost nearly a year ago, over her work on...
As he seeks new economic partnerships around the world, Prime Minister Mark Carney says publicly calling out other countries on issues like human rights is not helpful. “I do see that lecturing countries from afar is an ineffective strategy,” Carney said in a press conference with reporters in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia on Thursday. “It’s satisfying, but it’s ineffective.”
Federal-provincial transfers are among the most important – and politically contested – features of Canadian public finance, yet they remain among the least understood. Based on the principle that Canadians, regardless of where they live, should have reasonably comparable access to public services at reasonably comparable levels of taxation, the equalization system serves a core stabilizing role in Canada’s decentralized...
Family members make up roughly one-quarter of Canada’s annual permanent resident admissions, and governments regularly celebrate family reunification as a pillar of Canadian immigration policy. Yet, the Family Class Program still reflects a narrow, outdated understanding of what constitutes a family and continues to impose inconsistent, sometimes opaque barriers that prevent many migrant families from reuniting.
A collection of SubStack publishing within Canadian public affairs.
Canada’s political and media spheres seem to have developed an unhealthy obsession with the CUSMA. Will it survive the whims and shifting moods of the US president? Will we ever regain the level of access to the American market that we took for granted just a few years ago? What price will we have to pay to preserve what remains...
The great promise of the post-war era was that growth and fairness could advance together. That promise is breaking down – not just because of government failures, but because the nature of growth has changed. The same knowledge economy that is generating extraordinary growth requires fewer people to create it – and concentrates its rewards in fewer hands. Today’s increasingly...
In 1995 the Canadian economy was not exactly humming along – it still hadn’t got its mojo back after the severe 1990-92 recession. The unemployment rate was 9.5%, GDP per capita had only just made it back to the level of 1989, and steep spending cuts in Paul Martin’s February budget signaled more contraction.
Two new pipeline plans and an enormous $13-billion Meta data centre have been announced for Alberta in just the last few days. Brett Wilson, the veteran Calgary-based investor, joins Brian to explain the potential of the province to boom after just a slight loosening of the anti-development chokehold Ottawa had Alberta in for a decade with Justin Trudeau and Steven...
It’s no secret that Prime Minister Mark Carney thinks Canada should reduce its dependence on the U.S. It’s a message he delivered on the world stage in Davos. But new reporting from the Wall Street Journal illustrates how Carney has been making this pitch to European leaders behind the scenes, and how he’s become a central figure in the attempts...
It's been more than a quarter of a century since a Canadian Prime Minister touched down on Saudi Arabian soil to meet with the country's leader. That was until PM Carney headed south from Turkey to visit the Kingdom last week. The trip is a part of Carney's quest to find new global alliances and trading partners aside from the...
NATO’s leaders left The Hague declaring unity—but did the alliance emerge stronger, or simply avoid disaster? As allies commit to historic defence spending and Canada embarks on its biggest military procurement in history, is the country finally becoming a serious defence player? And has Ukraine gone from needing NATO to becoming indispensable to its future? Sage contributors Kerry Buck, Canada’s...
